A place to show off the things I have baked
My mum retires this month and has a retirement lunch with her workmates today so I made her cakes to take along.
They are lemon and raspberry cupcakes with edible flowers. They’re all a combination of:
I ended up with spare buttercream, so I made a few more for people to share this week too:
Happy Retirement, Mum!
I am making some cupcakes that required a meringue shell to use for decoration. I had used some chickpeas earlier this week for a curry, but kept the aquafaba (chickpea water) to use to make meringues. I’d not done this for a while, so looked for a recipe online and found this one from Loving it Vegan which works perfectly!
As I was only using the meringue to crush up, I just plopped the mixture into blobs on my baking trays
And they baked AMAZINGLY
I had loads spare, so decided I’d take some to family this weekend. I dipped some in dark chocolate:
and then I sandwiched a few of those with leftover “buttercream” from the Severance cake I did this week too:
That’s the random mix all boxed up to give away tomorrow.
– “Plain” (vanilla) meringue shells
– Chocolate meringue shells
– Sandwiched chocolate meringue shells
My friend is 40 today. He’s the penultimate person in our quiz-friend group to turn 40, with me being the last one next month. We all have a love for the TV show, Severance, so I decided to make a cake for his birthday based on this.
I usually lack my own ideas and look to the internet for inspiration… but there were so few out there! I had to use my own imagination.
The front of the cake / balloon was based on a TV poster for season 2:
I then went for the “numbers” for the rear of the cake.
The cake itself was verrrrrryyyyy soft. I ussed plant butter for the buttercream (just as it’s so much cheaper than butter) but I added some liquid to it like I do with usual buttercream and this led to a very soft consistency. It held shape, but it did not hold up to being sliced with a butter knife at the pub. At least it tasted AMAZING!
One of my work colleagues reached out to me to ask if I could make a retirement cake for her husband who had retired from Royal Mail after working there for 47 years! I agreed to give it a go.
I started by originally coming up with the below, very poor, mock-up of a cake based on various other cakes I’d found online.
We agreed with the “usual” cake – vanilla sponge, strawberry jam, and vanilla buttercream. The toppers could be whatever I fancied so I went with cartoony postman (one from when he started and one from retiring) and decorations made from fondant.
To go with the main cake, there was also 48 cupcakes. Again, I was told to go with whatever flavours I fancied so we did:
12 x Chocolate
12 x Vanilla
12 x Cookies & Cream
12 x Lemon
The cupcakes were all made with a vegan recipe too so that most people could enjoy cake:
The cakes were topped with flavoured buttercream (made with plant butter) and both edible and non-edible decorations.
I got the post-themed ones from e-bay as they were printed on edible icing paper.
To avoid the toppers from wilting, I made fondant discs to sit between the toppers and the buttercream, and added the toppers just before delivery to keep them as fresh as possible.
Here’s some shots of the fondant decorations “drying out” before being added to the cake.
I got asked to make a Frozen themed cake for a third birthday. I actually made one of these a few years back for my volunteer baking, so I used the same design this time around for the birthday request.
I tried to be crafty and cut the top half of Else out of a gift bag and attached to some kebab skewers with glue dots. I then coloured some fondant to match the dress and added that as the skirt. Added glitter and sprinkles as the finishing touches.
For comparison, here is the side by side of the one from a few years back with the one I made this week:
I look after a Bulldog called Betty from time to time after a few years back when she came to stay with us for a few months. Her owner is 50 this week, and went to Liverpool to celebrate at the weekend so Betty came to stay with us.
I wanted to treat her owner, so I got a few bits & pieces and then decided to make some cupcakes with Bulldogs on! This is Betty who I used for the inspiration…
Betty was actually sat on the sofa next to me whilst I used a tray and fondant to make the toppers. I basically used various colours of fondant to make these bulldog faces:
I made 3 but only used 2 in the box of cakes that I gave to the recipient. The spare one has topped a cupcake that is back in the freezer to pass on to my parents too!
The actual cupcakes are made with a Caramelised Biscuit liquer (like Biscoff) which was also used in the buttercream topping. I added some cocoa powder ass well to give a chocolatey swirl, and finished with some sprinkles.
One more Betty…
well… 42 if you’re actually counting
My sister in law is 40 this week, and my husband asked me to make 40 cupcakes for her. I bake in multiples of 6 and only had boxes that hold 6 or 12, so she’s getting 42 instead. It is the answer to life, the universe and everything, so I’m sure that the 42 is OK.
Anyway… The cakes
Mint chocolate:
Chocolate cake with a peppermint fondant filling. Topped with chocolate and mint swirled buttercream and a piece of mint chocolate bar.
Vanilla:
Vanilla sponge topped with vanilla buttercream and sprinkles. A classic.
Mega chocolate:
Chocolate cake, topped with chocolate buttercream (made with additional melted dark chocolate mixed in). Finished with Oreo Crumbles and a Cadbury Twirl mini.
Lemon:
Another simple, yet effective flavour. Lemon sponge, topped with lemon buttercream and sprinkles.
Chocolate Orange:
Chocolate sponge that was flavoured with Orange essence. Topped with orance chocolate buttercream, and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange segment.
White Chocolate Cherry:
Sponge cake flavoured with cherry essence and white chocolate chips baked in. Topped with cherry buttercream and a white chocolate chunk.
Salted Caramel:
Salted caramel flavoured sponge topped with salted caramel buttercream and a sprinkle of sea-salt. Fainal touch are Cadbury caramel chocolates / Quality Street caramel barrel.
I did add toppers to each cake to finish them too
It’s Amber’s 10th Birthday!
Amber is my eldest niece, and I’ve made her birthday cakes every year since she was born. Usually, I make a cake based on her request and over the years this has included:
Her birthday falls quite soon after Christmas, and often the ideas come my way later on. This year, I asked if I could just run with my own idea and I was told to “have fun with it”. In school last year, Amber learnt about space and has been really interested in it ever since. She was jealous that we went to visit NASA in Houston on our trip last year, so I knew that I wanted to make her a “space” themed cake.
I made a fondant cake topper astronaut with its helmet off, so that I could try model a character of Amber to sit on the cake. The glasses were the hardest part for me – I couldn’t make them out of icing (too fiddly) so I ended up stripping a pipe-cleaner instead.
The planet on the top of the cake was made using a round silicon mold that a workmate gave me in December as they weren’t going to use them… never has something come to me so perfectly timed.
I was scared that they’d snap when trying to remove them from the mold, but they came out intact – hooray!
I tried to make the letters for “AMBER” in the same planet design, but the chocolate didn’t quite fill the molds. I still used them though – never waste food!
The cake was a “standard” birthday cake: Vanilla cake, strawberry jam & vanilla buttercream. I iced the cake by hand (didn’t use my cake coating kits for ths one) and used a scraper to achieve the colouring on the outside of the cake. I used a base of light-pink coloured buttercream and them added purple, magenta and silver for the pink “galaxy” effect.
I used a paint brush to apply the silver star splatter, and used some fancy sprinkles that my friend got me for Christmas to add stars to the outside.
After adding the planet and the astronaut topper, I used some cake balls to add some additional planet design to the outside of the cake.
We presented the cake today, then cut some slices for people to enjoy – I was really happy with how this one turned out.
The first time I’ve made my own Christmas Cake… just because I felt like it! I LOVE fruit cake (not everyone does) and made this 8 inch cake in case anyone in my family fancied it this week.
So far, I’ve only tried some cake scraps when I trimmed the top of the cake to flatten it off (and they were goooooood):
The cake is topped with marzipan and fondant icing (as is standard) but I used a ginger preserve to stick the marzipan to the top.
To finish the cake, I decided to make fondant gonk alongside holly and berries:
The gonk is a simple design but I like how effective it is.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
I remembered this weekend how much I enjoy baking when I do it just for fun and not because I HAD to bake for someone.
I decided to try making a yule log for the first time and had a look online. I found a recipe for a larger pan so I did 3/4 the amount as I had a smaller tray.
I made a whipped white chocolate cream ganache filling using 200g double cream and 200g white chocolate.
The recipe I followed said to roll the Yule log lengthways (longest side) but due to the thickness of my cake and filling it ended up looking like an arctic roll.
I coated the outside of the log with a dark chocolate ganache buttercream & found when I was finished that I had too much coating left. Being me, I decided to make another Yule log to use the excess filling and coating.
I made the second Yule log with less ingredients to make a thinner cake in the hope that it would be easier to roll. This time, I rolled from the thinner end to get more of a swirl
I used the leftover coating to cover the Yule log:
I assume it’s because I left the coating overnight, but the second Yule log looked far darker than the first even though it was the same mixture.
Overall, I was really happy with how these turned out. They look OK, and taste really good! Marry Christmas to me & my family!